Description
Two of the things that take a site offline are dates on a calendar. The day the SSL certificate expires. The day the domain registration lapses. Both are easy to miss, and both take the whole site down when they pass.
The third one is quieter. WordPress cron stops running and nothing tells you. Backups stop, scheduled posts sit there, security scans never fire, and the admin screen looks exactly the same as always.
This plugin puts all three on your dashboard. Connect the site to My Website is Online, free for one site, and it also tells you when the site goes down.
What you see
- Days left on your SSL certificate, and who issued it. Read from outside, the way a visitor sees it.
- Days left before the domain has to be renewed.
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Whether scheduled tasks are running, waiting for a visitor, or not running at all.
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Once connected: whether the site is up, its response time, its uptime over 24 hours, 7 and 30 days, and its latest incidents.
Warnings appear at 14, 7 and 3 days before either date, on the dashboard and by email. The emails go to the site administration address and can be turned off on the plugin page.
No account needed for the dates
Install it, activate it, and the dashboard widget fills itself in. There is no sign up and nothing to configure for the certificate, the domain and cron.
Uptime monitoring, free for one site
A WordPress site cannot tell you that it is down, because when it is down there is nothing left to tell you. That takes a service watching from outside. Connect the site from the plugin page with your email and a password: if you already have a My Website is Online account, the site is added to it; if not, the account is created. The site is then checked every 5 minutes and you get an email when it goes down. New accounts start with 14 days of every paid feature, no card, then stay free for this site. https://mywebsiteisonline.com/
External services
This plugin relies on My Website is Online, a third party service, to read the two expiry dates it shows you. Your site cannot read them on its own. The certificate has to be inspected from outside, and the registration date comes from the domain registry.
What is sent: the site address, and the WordPress, PHP and plugin versions.
When it is sent: once when you activate the plugin, once when an administrator first opens the dashboard or the plugin page, and once a day after that, or every 15 minutes once the site is connected. Also when you press the check button.
What comes back: the expiry date and issuer of the SSL certificate, and the expiry date of the domain registration. Once the site is connected, also the account email, the monitoring state, the uptime figures and the latest incidents.
Until you connect the site, no personal data is collected, no account is created, and My Website is Online never sends a request to your site.
When you connect the site: only when an administrator clicks “Connect this site” on the plugin page. The email and password typed in the form (or a connect code from the app) are sent once, with the address of the plugin page, to create the account or sign in to it. They are never stored on your site. While connecting, the service requests a one-time verification address on your site (/wp-json/mwio/v1/challenge) to confirm the request comes from it. Once connected, the service requests your site on its check interval, every 5 minutes on the free plan, to see whether it is up. Disconnecting or deleting the plugin unlinks the site; its monitoring keeps running in your account until you remove it there.
Service: https://mywebsiteisonline.com/
Privacy policy: https://mywebsiteisonline.com/privacy-policy/
Terms and conditions: https://mywebsiteisonline.com/terms-and-conditions/
Installation
- Install the plugin from the WordPress plugin directory, or upload it to
/wp-content/plugins/ - Activate it through the Plugins menu
- Look at your dashboard
FAQ
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Do I need an account?
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Not for the certificate, the domain and cron: the plugin works on its own. Uptime monitoring needs a My Website is Online account, which you create or connect from the plugin page with an email and a password. It is free for one site.
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I already have a My Website is Online account.
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Use its email and password in the connect form: the site is added to your account. If you sign in with Google or GitHub, or with two-factor login, use a connect code from the app instead.
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My certificate says it could not be read. Is that bad?
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Not necessarily. It means the service could not open a secure connection to your site from outside. That happens on local installs, on staging sites behind a password, and on hosts that block unknown visitors. It is still worth knowing, because a visitor may be hitting the same wall.
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My domain registration says the registry published nothing. Why?
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Some registries do not publish an expiry date. There is nothing wrong with the domain.
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What does “waiting for a visitor” mean under WordPress cron?
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WordPress runs its scheduled tasks when someone loads a page. On a quiet site nothing runs for hours, so backups and scheduled posts fall behind. A monitoring service checking the site every minute keeps it awake.
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Can I point the plugin at a different server?
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Yes. Define
MWIO_UPTIME_API_BASEinwp-config.php. It defaults to the production service.
Reviews
Contributors and Developers
“Uptime Monitoring for WordPress – My Website is Online” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.
Contributors
“Uptime Monitoring for WordPress – My Website is Online” has been translated into 1 locale. Thank you to the translators for their contributions.
Translate “Uptime Monitoring for WordPress – My Website is Online” into your language.
Interested in development?
Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.
Change Log
2.2.0
- New: connect the site to My Website is Online from the plugin page and get an email when it goes down, free for one site. Works with a new or an existing account.
- Once connected, the plugin page and the dashboard show whether the site is up, its response time, its uptime and its latest incidents.
- The plugin page has a new layout: monitoring first, with the settings and the details beside it.
- The plugin no longer shows an outdated price.
- A site copied to a staging server or moved to a new domain now shows its own readings instead of the old address’s, and a site whose WordPress files live in their own folder is checked on its public address.
- New suggestion to serve your media from a CDN with FastCloudWP.
2.1.1
- Fixed the widget staying stuck on the message saying the site has not reached My Website is Online, on sites that answer on more than one domain.
- A site running on a local or private address now says there is nothing to watch, instead of trying to connect forever and showing readings taken on another address.
- The dates now line up on the right, under the value they belong to.
2.1.0
- New email alerts when your certificate or your domain registration is about to run out. Turn them off on the plugin page.
- Scheduled tasks now run every 15 minutes instead of once an hour, so the status you see is fresher.
- The WordPress cron panel now shows two things: the last time the scheduler started, and the last time a task actually ran.
- New warning when the scheduler starts but nothing on it runs.
- The plugin is now available in French, Spanish, Vietnamese, Russian and Hindi.
2.0.0
- New dashboard widget showing your SSL certificate expiry, your domain registration expiry and whether WordPress cron is running.
- Warnings 14, 7 and 3 days before your certificate or your domain expires.
- No more setup. The plugin connects on its own and the website code field is gone.
- The dashboard fills in as soon as you activate, even on sites where WordPress cron is not running.
- Compatible with WordPress 7.1. Now requires PHP 8.1.
- Everything the plugin stores is removed when you delete it.
1.0.1
- Fix doing it wrong trigger errors for REST API route definition.
- Add instructions to validate configuration.
1.0.0
- First stable version.